The Wolves
by thats-a-screwdriver
Summary: When the Doctor accidentally lands a couple of light years from where he was originally heading, he and Rose soon find themselves stuck in an early human space colony, facing attacks from the mysterious wolves. A single episode set during series 2.


**This is a Ten and Rose-story that kind of just came to me in as a very claustrophobic and dark but still kind of great dream. It wasn't a Doctor Who story originally (I didn't even know what Doctor Who was back then) but with a few alternations the idea became a really good Doctor Who-episode. That's what this is, a really long episode set somewhere during season 2. This is my first ever fanfic (though I've written all sorts of stories and half-finished books since I was old enough to hold a pen), and my first ever long story in English. English is not my native language (that's Swedish. Very exciting, I know) so a couple of weird formulations and one or two grammar mistakes is due to happen - even if I try to avoid them.**

**Enjoy!**

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**The Wolves - Chapter 1**

"So, where do you want to go this time?"

"Oh, I don't know, someplace warm would be nice, after that snowstorm", Rose said with a quick glance at the snow by the doors, which still hadn't quite melted.

"We have all of space and time, so someplace warm it is!" the Doctor said and started running around the flight controls, changing settings and pushing buttons which eventually made the ship move. "Just watch me!"

Mere seconds later they landed and the Doctor ran outside. Rose followed but stopped quite abruptly, since they hit another door instantly. They were standing in a small room, crammed with strange looking cleaning articles.

"What have you got for me this time, dear?" the Doctor said and looked at the TARDIS.

"Um", Rose said. "So … where are we?"

The Doctor smiled at her. "In a broom cupboard, apparently."

"Oh, really. But I guess they need cupboards all … over the universe", Rose said and looked around the small space.

"You're not impressed, are you? It's warm, at least."

She raised her eyebrows and gave him an amused look. But he was right; the temperature was definitely comfortable, so Rose took off her winter coat and threw it in the TARDIS. "And when are we?"

"No idea, let's find out", he said and burst out through the door.

They happened to be in a long, grey corridor, with twenty or so space looking doors just like the one they've just got out from.

"Exciting", Rose said.

"Oh, now don't be so sulky."

They went through the door in the end of the corridor – which was locked but obviously didn't stay in that status for long – and walked into yet another corridor, this with roof windows all along the corridor and more windows on the right to an enormous greenhouse all along the right side. Outside the sun was shining from a weird blue green, almost ocean like, sky.

"Oh", said the Doctor. "I think I know where we are!"

He took out the sonic screwdriver and scanned the door leading to the greenhouse.

"Yup, Space Station 106. Of course."  
He turned to her and smiled.

"Well, Rose, then we're just a couple of light years and … let's see … about two hundred years away from where I was originally heading."

"And you sound like that's impressively accurate", Rose said, but couldn't help laughing, still fascinated by pretty much everything no matter where they went. "So what is this place?"

"It's one of humanity's very first space colonies, just about five hundred years into your future. So by now you've just worked out how to travel fast enough to reach out in to space, but you still think that you're more or less alone in the universe. And travelling here, about seven light years from earth, take a couple of years. Now, let's go and find someone we can talk to!"

They continued through another corridor, and just as they were to open the next door, it opened by itself and a woman came through. She almost ran into them and stopped abruptly, looking confused. She was quite tall, with short, black hair and chocolate brown skin, dressed in a grey military uniform.

"Hello", the Doctor said, with one of his very disarming smiles. "Nice to meet you?"

"Who are you? And what the hell are you doing down here?" she said.

"Oh, just passing through, as usual. I'm the Doctor and this is Rose. Um, maintenance checks", he improvised, and showed her the psychic paper. She didn't look too convinced. In fact she looked at them quite suspiciously.

"Passing through? There is nothing to pass through _from_. And how did you find these civilian clothes anyway?", she asked, looking at the Doctor's brown suit and Rose's jeans and Ian Dury t-shirt the Doctor had bought for her when they had actually gone to the correct -79.

"Um. Let's not think about that. What's your name?"

"Edwina, but let's not think about that", she repeated ironically. "If you could just come with me to the control room, please."

Edwina turned around and started to walk away, assuming they would follow. Which they of course did.

"Do you have plan?" Rose whispered to the Doctor.

"You know me, I never have a plan", he said, with a big, excited grin. "Space station 106, I can't believe I've never thought of going here before!"

They followed Edwina through another corridor.

"Is this some kind of storage part of the base?" the Doctor asked her.

"Yes, as if you didn't know that already."

They eventually met some people, with whom Edwina started chatting as they went along. The deeper into the heart of the space station they went, the more people there were. Men, women and children were crowding the corridors and rooms, all in the same grey military uniforms as Edwina, even the children. And there were no windows anywhere except the roof windows – which went along the corridors – so everything they saw of the alien planet outside was the strange blue green sky. Eventually they went through a pair of high secure-looking doors and stopped in a small hallway. Edwina picked up a phone hanging from the wall, announcing their arrival and where she had picked them up, and the last door opened.

Before them was a big, perfectly circular room, with a lot of technical equipment and computers and things Rose had no idea what it was. About twenty people were busy working at the computers, and in the middle of it all was the spider in the web, a man who clearly stood out from the rest. Not only because of the very classy suit he was wearing or his steal grey hair, but also because of the four parallel scars running from his left eye down his chin and neck, making his face look not only deformed, but also incredibly grim. The look in his eyes suddenly made Rose a little bit worried for their safety. But the Doctor smiled, as always. Even though that special smile of his that always made Rose feel a little dizzy, didn't affect this man at all.

"Hello", the Doctor said. "What's your name?"

The leader, at least Rose assumed he was some sort of leader, laughed loudly, and it made him even creepier.

"I'm surprised you don't know that", he said, and his eyes narrowed slightly. "I'm Macellarius."

"I'm the Doctor and this is Rose."

"Hello", Rose said.

"So you are the investigators?" Macellarius asked.

"Yes we are", the Doctor lied.

"You arrived a bit earlier than planned", Macellarius said, his eyes narrowing slightly. "And how did you end up in the storage section without anyone even noticing your arrival?"

"Well, we have a special ship, quite small. And we, um, landed a bit off course."

"Ah", Macellarius said, but he didn't look too convinced. "Alexander, show them around and then leave them with Scott."

"Yes sir."

A young man stood up, saluted and nodded to the Doctor and Rose and then gestured to them to follow him. They went out through another pair of doors and into a corridor. Rose felt completely lost, with all these grey, identical corridors and equally grey doors.

"I guess I should show you the sleeping facilities and the nearest dining room, Dr. Scott will show you the labs and the greenhouses. Personally, I think it's good that you're here, but it was an unpleasant surprise for Macellarius you showed up so early", Alexander said.

The Doctor nodded as they went into yet another room, apparently where they would sleep. There were two alcove bunk beds to the left and a built in wardrobe to the right. It wasn't a very big room, in fact, when Rose stood in the middle, she could touch the beds with her left hand and the wardrobe door with her right. All was grey without even the tiniest splash of color.

"Looks good enough", the Doctor said.

Rose smiled.

"Where is your luggage? Is it back in your ship? I'll arrange it being taken here", Alexander said. And after a short pause, he added "Where is … your ship?"

"Oh, we happened to park in the storage section by mistake. But we'll just go get it ourselves later."

Alexander seemed pleased enough with that answer.

"As long as Scott gives you clearance", he said, shrugging. "Now, come on!"

Scott showed them the nearest dining room, and began to explain the navigation system of letters and numbers above each door, as they went to the labs.

"So, the first letter is the section of the base, the second and third are the corridor number, the fourth and fifth are the room number and then we don't have to care about the rest of the numbers, yes?", Rose said to Alexander.

"Exactly, the rest is just for the central heating and stuff, I don't even understand it myself", he smiled.

"Right", Rose said, as they went through two high security doors and, Rose guessed, into the labs.

They were standing in the middle of a big room, filled with high tech-equipment. In the middle there was a round desk, with see through-screens all around it, where two men and a young woman seemed to browse through some kind of complex data. To Rose, it looked like something from a science fiction-movie. To the Doctor, it looked like they were measuring and cataloguing all sorts of information from the whole planet, in a pretty antique lab from the middle of the 30th century.

From a glass door to the left, a woman, approximately in her early fifties, came through, talking to someone through some kind of ear device.

"No, don't put the report in there. Oh come on, it's not like it's hard. Just give me the damn haxico measurements in time for dinner thank you very much."

She ended the conversation and turned to them.

"You must be the investigators", she said, raising an eyebrow and looking at them, somewhat amused. "Nice clothes."

"Thank you. I'm the Doctor and this is Rose. And you are … Scott, I suppose?" the Doctor replied.

"Yes, I am", she said. "Thank you Alexander, I can take it from here, you can go back to work now."

"Yes, m'am", Alexander said, saluted and began to walk away.

"How many times have I told you not to salute, damn it!" Scott called after him. "Now, let's go in here."

She turned and went back through the glass doors. Rose and the Doctor followed. The first thing Rose saw was that unlike all the other rooms they had been in, this room had not only a roof window, but a whole glass wall. For the first time she got a glimpse of the planet outside. Within the space station area, there was nothing but short grass, but fifty yards away, a high, bob wired-fence separated the base from a dense jungle. It reminded of a tropical rainforest, only there wasn't only trees, but thirty feet high fern-like plants, three feet wide pink flowers hanging from the trees and a lot of other odd things Rose didn't notice once she saw the large, birdlike creatures emerge from the treetops. Each bird – or that was what Rose would call them, although they didn't seem to have feathers – flapped three pairs of wings and quickly gained height.

Only once the creatures had completely disappeared out of sight, Rose really saw the rest of the room. There was a kitchenette, a long twelve-person table, lots and lots of books and in the roof, there hang utterly realistic models of different kinds of airborne animals.

"We call this class _Aviopteryx_, or just aves for short", Scott said. "Come here, I'll give you a closer look."

Rose and the Doctor followed Scott to the other end of the room, where a big, glass window showed a small aviary, containing tiny, blue and green dappled aves. Rose looked at them and this close up she became even more fascinated by their odd anatomy – three pair of wings, long jaws with tiny teeth and small, lively eyes. Despite the fact that they looked like creations from a strange dream, they still looked completely natural and surprisingly lithe and fast when they flitted around the aviary like hummingbirds.

"We keep them here, in order to study their behaviour more closely. The blue ones here eat insect-like animals and leaves. The aves are just as plentiful as the birds are on Earth, or even more so, they are the dominant group of species here, like mammals on earth. There are dozens of different types of them; they specialize in different foods and ecological niches just like birds on Earth. We have counted and named hundreds of different species and it feel like we have only just begun.

Just look at them! They are so earth-like but yet so completely different, beyond our wildest imagination. And the molecules in their DNA are exactly the same as ours, even if the cells work a little different... But don't let me bore you, I could talk about molecular structures all day", Scott said with a quite amused look.

"Oh not at all", the Doctor said. "This is very interesting!"

Rose smiled at the sight of the Doctors excited grin; he looked like a child in a toy store.

"I can't understand why I've never thought of coming here before, this planet is so fascinating", the Doctor muttered to Rose, with a wide grin.

Scott continued to show them around the labs, she explained all the techincal equipment (Rose gave up trying to understand after a couple of minutes though), guided them through all the models hanging in the roof of the conference room and continued talking about the nature of the planet.

"The climate is slightly hotter than on Earth. This base is located between the equator and the north pole, and the climate is very much like a tropical rainforest on earth, warm and with a lot of rain. Near the equator it gets almost unbearably hot for humans, but the plants and animals have adapted to it. There is no ice sheets near the poles here", Scott said.

Outside the sun had started to set, turning the blue green sky orange. Rose noticed three moons and smiled. These alien skies never stopped to fascinate here. Scott noticed her eyes wandering off to the heavens and smiled softly.

"The first night shift should start any moment. Then I'm off duty. Oh, did they tell you about the long nights and days here? Each day and night are not twelve but twenty hours long since the planet is bigger than Earth, so each day is divided in four shifts that last ten hours. And to complicate it further each year is four hundred and eight days long, not three hundred and sixty five, which make the seasons very out of sync with Earth. But the day and night-shifts works well once you get used to them."

The moment she finished speaking a bell rang off, clearly the signal for the end of the shift.

"Do you want to come with me to our dining hall for dinner?", Scott asked.

"Yeah, sure", the Doctor said, and followed her out in the labyrinth of corridors.

Suddenly a young, black-haired woman came up to Scott, obviously worried.

"Have you heard anything about an attack? Anything?" she stuttered. She was shaking and started to cry. "Someone said something about Anthony's team being late."

"No, nothing", Scott said. "Nothing, I've been busy with these two."

The girl looked at them but didn't seem to really see them.

"I'll just have to ... I'll go check", she said absently, tears running down her cheeks.

"What was all that about?", the Doctor said as soon as she'd left.

Scott frowned.

"Oh, nothing really."

But she looked worried and her eyes followed the girl as she ran down the corridor.

"Well, she didn't seem to think it was nothing", Rose said angrily. "She seemed really upset."

"Let's go", Scott said, heading for the dining hall.

"How can you just let it go like that? Do you know what she was talking about? Do you even kn-"

Rose was interrupted by the sound of angry voices down the corridor. She recognised the girl's voice as she let out a cry of dismay. The Doctor and Rose immediately turned around and ran the other way.

"No, wait, you-", Scott said, but then surrendered and followed them.

They turned round a corner and ran into a small crowd. They found the girl sitting on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. Everyone was discussing something angrily but none of it made sense to the Doctor or Rose. An elderly dark woman, supposedly a friend to the crying girl, sat down next to her and hugged her tightly.

"It's going to be all right. Everything's going to be all right Mia", she said softly, Mia crying in her arms.

"Excuse me", the Doctor said fiercely. "But exactly what is going to be all right?"

Rose recognised that look on his face, that angry, yet keen-to-help voice, the look of the oncoming storm in his eyes. He was desperate to find out what was going on, he always was. Rose looked to Scott, whose controlled façade was starting to fall.

"You two with me", she commanded, although her voice did shiver slightly. "We can discuss this somewhere else."

The Doctor seemed indecisive, but after a moment of doubt he followed Scott. A couple of minutes later they had sat down in the dining hall with three portions of lab-grown protein and vegetables – which, to be honest, tasted pretty dull.

"So why did you lie to us, telling us that whatever caused that chaos was nothing?" the Doctor said, still angry.

"I ..." Scott sighed, running her fingers through her hair, looking away from them. "There have been these attacks. They've been attacking transports and all sorts of outside workers and researchers for years but the last months it's been getting a lot worse, they're attack anything that moves. But the, well, management refuses to do anything about it."

"And who exactly are _they_?"

Scott suddenly looked very uncomfortable. "I'll take you outside for a research and maintenance tour tomorrow."

"Wh-", the Doctor started but the look on Scott's face told him that_ something _made it impossible for her to discuss any further. He didn't know what that _something_ was, but he got a strong feeling it wouldn't be a problem if they went outside for research and maintenance.


End file.
